QUEBEC OFFICIALS DEFY LANGUAGE PROVISION

Quebec provincial officials, in an ongoing controversy over whether French or English should be used on signs, decided Sunday to ignore a provision of Canada's constitution and still require exterior business signs be written in French.

The provincial government, however, softened Quebec's politically sensitive language laws by saying that signs inside businesses could also be written in English.The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Thursday that Quebec's language laws requiring all business signs to be written in French was unconstitutional and violated the rights of English-speaking people in the province.

Those rights are protected in Canada's Charter of Rights, comparable to the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution.